Summer Internships Can Be a Real Beach

While each of our undergraduate minors gets hands-on museum experience during their summer internships, two of our students got to stick their toes in the Delaware sand while at their sites. Kira Lyle joined the crew at the Lewes Historical Society while Elliott Henry dug into the archives of the Rehoboth Art League.

Besides helping create the basic operations manual for the museum, Kira gained experience in public programming working with the museum’s inaugural Summer Camp and Archeological Program.

Kira (seated) with the happy campers

But it wasn’t all sand and campers for Kira. Her internship took a ‘grave’ turn as she cataloged tombstones at Conley’s Chapel cemetery. For years, the Lewes Historical Society has been conducting a systematic survey of cemeteries and historic burial sites in Lewes and Rehoboth Hundred. Kira’s work will be added to the online database and provides a valuable resource for genealogy researchers.

Elliott Henry

It may sound like a punishment to have an internship at the beach only to spend it sorting through boxes in a hot attic. But that is exactly what senior Elliott Henry did. Don’t feel too bad for him though; as he sorted through dozens of boxes of organizational archives of the Rehoboth Art League, he uncovered objects that spawned a new exhibition, found diaries and photos of League founder and artist Ethel P. B. Leach, and discovered (and scanned) four boxes of Kodachrome slides from the Corkran family. In addition to finding long-lost treasures, Elliott moved the archives into the climate-controlled storage area to preserve them for future generations.

Ethel P.B. Leach, “Portrait of Fannie Brown Quillen Luff”

Elliott is now working on a blog that documents his adventures in the archives.